made of steel, or something
by dress without sleeves
Summary: 3X01. Casey and Sarah without Chuck. // In the moments where he bothers to like anybody, he likes Walker. She's in his top five favorite people, though, to be fair, he only actually likes seven and four of them are dead. Sarah/Chuck-ish, Casey/Chuck-ish.


**Author's Notes:** Finally! A Chuck fic! I've been wanting to write a Chuck fic for the longest time, but I never really had the inspiration. So thank you, Season 3 premiere.

Title stolen from _Steel Magnolias_. I love that that's Casey's favorite movie.

Okay. Maybe I just love Casey. Eh, semantics.

made of steel, or something

When they drop Bartowski off at the airport, Walker kisses him on the mouth, long and hard. It's not something she usually does in front of Casey, but he'd be an idiot if he didn't know it was something that she usually does. They hand him off to four agents and Casey lets Bartowski hug him.

He figures, hey. It might be his last chance, and the kid's been itching for it since the first day they met.

After the door closes and they watch the plane take off, Walker looks down at her hands and says quietly, "Four men is _not_ enough."

Casey grins. In the moments where he bothers to like anybody, he likes Walker. She's less annoying than most people, and only slightly more annoying than the rest, which puts her in Casey's top five favorite people.

To be fair, he only actually likes seven, and four of them are dead.

"He'll be fine," Casey tells her gruffly. He's not quite comfortable with Walker's more annoying trait of wanting to be friends with people, but he's getting used to it. She smiles at him, wide but with no teeth, which he's learned means that it's more for his benefit than anything else.

Bartowski used to get that smile a lot, because Bartowski is an idiot.

Casey sighs, and turns on the radio. He's done his emotional outreach for the day. If she doesn't want to talk, he doesn't want to talk.

The drive home is … weirdly quiet, given what he's used to.

—

After Bartowski goes, Walker becomes the partner he'd always wanted: professional, smart, focused. It means she's either a better agent but a worse person than he initially thought, and all that stuff with Bartowski really was just her Larkin-ian way of getting him to trust her, or she's up to something.

It's not hard to figure it out — two nights tracking her and one call to the DMV and he puts it together.

When she comes to his house three weeks into Bartowski's six-week training and says casually that her father's in Arizona, and she's going to go spend a few days with him, Casey's hand twitches toward his gun.

Then he says, "All right. You deserve a break."

He gives her a hard look as he says it, and she falters, staring at him. "I. Um. Casey." She hesitates. "John."

"Walker," he tells her calmly, before this becomes one of those emotional goodbyes that Bartowski so loved, "you stick around any longer and I'm going to start getting suspicious."

Her eyes are bright and she kisses his cheek swiftly before turning on her heel and leaving the castle without ever looking back.

—

Four days later she's back. He doesn't ask, she doesn't tell. It's the way he likes it.

—

It works, for a while. With Bartowski is had been all gloves and emotional mollycoddling, but Walker's strong for all her weaknesses and he respects her enough to treat her like it. They don't talk about Bartowski, and they don't talk about the way her eyes linger on the Buy More every time they drive past.

They don't talk about a lot of things. It's Casey's ideal relationship.

Until of course the Awesomes (it's an indication that he's spent far too much with Bartowski that he doesn't even know their real last name) come back from their honeymoon and Ellie surprises Sarah at the Orange Orange with a little gift-wrapped box.

Casey is in the castle, but he watches on the monitors.

Walker's smile is too wide to be real, the kind of desperately big happiness that she grasps at whenever she's overwhelmed.

"Oh, Ellie," she breathes, her voice hitching, "it's beautiful."

Ellie is talking at a thousand miles a minute, gesturing madly and laughing breathlessly. For the first time, Casey sort of sees the resemblance to the other Bartowski. "Well Chuck told me that he had given you Mom's charm, which I thought was just the cutest thing ever, so I was worried that maybe this would be kind of creepy, you know, because that's sort of a romantic gift and all, but — well, when I saw it in the store I was just _so_ reminded of you and Chuck and everything you guys have become to each other and… I just couldn't help myself. Do you like it?"

In Walker's palm is a little silver charm. It's a hotdog. Later, when Casey finds it hitched onto the bracelet Walker pretends she doesn't keep in her pocket, he will notice that it has _Chuck & Sarah, August 7, 2009_ etched on either side of the bun.

Walker nods, frantically, but her face is crumbling. Ellie gasps and smiles and hugs her and asks, panicked, "What's wrong?"

"Oh," Walker laughs, pulling away and wiping her tears. "Oh, I just miss Chuck, that's all."

—

That night, Casey shows up at her apartment with a flask of whiskey. She looks surprised to see him but lets him in.

"All right," he says flatly, "I don't want to know what that idiot did and I don't want to know why he did it."

He pours her a glass and she takes it hesitantly. "I don't … understand."

Casey has never been good with emotional women. It's why he and Carina always got along so well. "Listen up, Walker, because I'm only going to say this once. You are a damn fine agent, and the best partner I've ever had. Spies aren't supposed to have feelings, but as far as I can tell, you've got so many that you can't see straight."

"Casey — "

"_Listen_. Stronger spies than you have let Chuck get under their skin."

She blinks. Looks at him for a long time. Then she says, in a very quiet voice, "Oh."

He refills her glass and his own. They both drink. Casey likes the way it burns; he always has. "The point is, it doesn't matter. Every spy in the world has feelings, Sarah. And they get in the way of every single mission. But the difference between a good spy and a dead spy is that the good spy _gets over it. _Right now. The second it's happening."

Walker swirls around the whiskey in her glass. For a moment he thinks she's about to cry.

But when she looks up, her eyes are hard, and she nods.

—

When they get the call that Bartowski failed spy training, Casey's first instinct is to say, _I could have told you that would happen._ For all his new power, for all the shiny new toys in his head, Bartowski will always be Bartowski.

Walker turns off the monitor and then smiles tightly at him. "Raise your hands if you're surprised," she says, and it's the new, hard humor he's gotten used to from her. Casey likes it.

She's been moving up solidly on his list. Top three, definitely.

"Always knew he was a lemon," he answers, as close to cheerful as Casey ever gets.

Walker shakes her head and shoves her gun into the back of her jeans before shrugging into a jacket. "Well, I hope he gets what he was looking for."

 The words are bitter, but her face is flat, so he doesn't say anything and just follows her out of the Orange Orange.

—

A couple of days later, Sarah comes in from her mission with a broke cell phone. She mentions that it had fallen in the pool and doesn't say another word about it.

Casey's got the afternoon free, so he takes it back home and fixes it. He likes fixing things. Used to be that he'd come home and watch the monitors, make sure no one's trying to kill Bartowski, and then settle down for a bourbon and _Steel Magnolias._

But. No monitors anymore, so. The phone it is.

When it flickers back to life the last call is frozen on screen. There are fifteen new messages.

_Sarah. It's me. I just. Look, I know that things are weird right now. I know that I … hurt you, in Prague, but I didn't — it was never about _you_, I mean, not in the way you think. Just… call me back. Please._

_Hey… me again. I don't know if you're getting these. Maybe they've given you a new number since you're on assignment, I don't know how these things work. Do you have to keep two phones, one for family and stuff and the other for work? I always wondered about that. Anyway, that's not important, I just… I really want to talk to you. I miss you. Please call me._

_It's Chuck again. I'll bet you're getting really sick of these. That's okay, I get sick of my voice all the time, so. You won't be the first. Look, Sarah, I know you're mad, and I'd be mad, too I just — fuck. What's the point. I hope you're doing okay._

_Sarah. 'S Chuck. I have a beard, it's long. Hate beards. No point in it though, heh, shaving I mean. Who cares about beards? Don't gay people have beards? No. Wait. I miss you. I think— I think I might have messed up big time. I love. So much. Why's stuff so hard alla time? Okay. Bye. Goodbye. Good—_

Casey deletes them all.

—

The night of the ruined mission at the restaurant, he drives Walker home. She's got her fingers twitching on her gun and is in no position to operate a vehicle.

It's those emotions again. But she's getting better at hiding them.

Casey's sort of proud.

At her door, he turns off the engine and she looks at him, surprised. He decides not to say anything, because getting involved in the Walker/Bartowski will-they-won't-they is just about the least interesting thing that he can think of.

But then she reaches for the door handle and he hears himself speaking: "Now that he's back, you'd better get used to him being back."

She freezes. "He's not an agent anymore," she says, her voice small. "He's not my _problem_ anymore."

Casey resists the urge to put his hand on her shoulder. "Not yet."

She sighs. Leans back against the seat and closes her eyes. He thinks for a moment that she looks beautiful.

"It's easy not to love him when he isn't here," she says at last.

Casey looks out at the window. At his own reflection. "I know," he tells the face staring back at him.

—

In the helicopter on the way back from Mexico, Walker presses herself against the wall and looks out the window. She doesn't speak.

Bartowski climbs up front and asks, "So how'd it feel, finally using that use and terrifying weapon that I know you polish every night and call _Betty_ when you think nobody can hear you?"

Casey grunts. It's his primary method of communication with Bartowski, because words only encourage him.

"You know, I always imagined that it's Betty with a _y_, not with an _i, _although apparently _i_'s are all the rage right now."

Another grunt.

"Anyway, you looked like you were having fun, which is both unsurprising and completely reassuring, because as long as Casey loves blowing things up then I know that all is right in the world." A breath. "Also, I'm sorry about everything and I hope you know that even though I flunked out of spy school I was totally trying to be like you the whole time."

Casey gives in, because he always does eventually. Everyone always gives in to Chuck eventually. He turns to raise his eyebrows. "You tried to be like me and flunked out?" he repeats, frowning.

"Er," Bartowski says. "Sort of?"

Casey turns back around. "Do yourself a favor, Bartowski. Shut up before I do it for you."

"Well at least _your_ feelings for me haven't changed," Bartowski mutters, before slumping back into his seat.

Casey catches Walker's eye in the reflection, and she's not smiling, but she isn't frowning either.

—

"..._love you, Sarah._"

She's sitting at the monitor, her back to him. He knows that she's crying by the way she stays perfectly still and lets the file play itself all the way to the end.

_Well_, Casey thinks.

_Back to square one._


End file.
